4 Effective Treatments for Macular Degeneration

Several illnesses can affect your vision, ranging from mild impairment to blindness. These include myopia, hyperopia, presbyopia, astigmatism, color blindness, night blindness, glaucoma, and cataracts, and they can develop when you’re young or start as you get older. Certain eye problems also affect parts crucial to your vision, such as the retina, which allows you to focus and perceive details.

Macular degeneration is an eye disease that damages the center of your retina (macula), comes in different types, and, without treatment, leads to loss of your central vision. Managing this condition requires routine examinations, monitoring its progression, and finding the most effective approach to preserving your vision. Let’s find out more about what macular degeneration does to your vision and the ways we can help.

Muncie, Indiana, residents struggling with vision problems, such as macular degeneration, can receive help from Dr. Jeffrey Rapkin and his dedicated staff at Retina Consultants of Muncie.

Types of macular degeneration

Your eyes use two types of vision to gather information: central vision, which allows you to see objects clearly in front of you, and peripheral vision, which enables you to see things outside your central field of vision. Macular degeneration harms the macula at the center of your retina in the back of your eye, and the two forms it takes come from different causes:

Wet

Also known as exudative macular degeneration, this condition develops when abnormal blood vessels grow under the retina and macula, leaking blood and fluid—the buildup of fluid forms a bulge that causes dark spots to appear in your central vision.

Dry

The most common form of this eye disease is the atrophic, or dry, version, and deposits of protein called drusen are responsible for its development. It occurs gradually over three stages, ultimately leading to the complete loss of central vision.

Causes and symptoms

Many risk factors play a role in getting this condition, including heredity, poor nutrition, lack of exercise, and smoking. Non-age-related degeneration can result from conditions such as diabetes, infections, and head injuries. 

In the early stages, macular degeneration can develop without symptoms, but when they present themselves, expect gradual loss of clear vision, distortion of the shape of objects, lines looking wavy or crooked, and empty and dark areas in your central vision.

Treatment options

To protect your vision, this is how we treat macular degeneration::

1. Supplements

Vitamins and minerals recommended by the Age-Related Eye Disease Studies (AREDS and AREDS2) slow down the progression of the dry form of this disease, including vitamins C and E, lutein, zeaxanthin, zinc, and copper.

2. Monitoring home changes

We help you stay on top of lifestyle changes, such as dietary adjustments, quitting smoking, managing your other medications, maintaining a healthy weight, and scheduling routine exams.

3. Medications

Anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) injections manage wet macular degeneration and sometimes improve vision.

4. Surgery

Photodynamic and laser coagulation therapy destroys leaking and abnormal blood vessels, and can be used with anti-VEGF injections.

If you have either form of this eye disease, it’s treatable, and we can help. Make an appointment with Dr. Rapkin and Retina Consultants of Muncie today to keep your central vision for as long as possible.